This present invention relates generally to a color printing system, and more specifically to a system that allows for automatically managing of colors in a printing system with the ability to choose the amount of user intervention in the process.
When printing with a color printing system, variations in color images produced by the system are very common. Such variations can occur, for example, when printing the same image at different times, when printing with different inks or when printing on different papers. To overcome these difficulties, color management techniques offer the possibility to print a target containing several hundreds patches, to measure these patches with a dedicated instrument, in order to characterize the printer system. The printing system includes a printer, an ink set and a specific paper. If one of the printer, ink of paper changes, the characterization has to be repeated. This characterization process is time consuming and generates costs in material as well as in resource allocation. Time consumption, or more generally resource allocation, is currently one of the most critical aspects for color management in printing facilities.
Color management is based on the use of International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles, which relate the color outputted by a device to the color expressed in a device independent space. This device independent space can be either CIELAB or XYZ color space. This workflow is summarized in FIG. 0.
The data is acquired by an input device 1000, whose ICC profile 1010 is known. The ICC profile is used by a color management module 1111 (CMM) to convert the input data 1100 into the CIELAB (or XYZ) color space, resulting in the device independent data 1101. To print this data, the CMM 1111 uses the ICC profile 1011 of the output device 1001, and transforms the device independent data 1101 into an output device specific data 1102. The output device specific data 1102 is sent to the output device 1001, resulting in a print 1002 with the desired colors.
In order to successfully apply color management one needs an input ICC profile, an output ICC profile associated with output device as well as a CMM.